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altom23 wrote:

Sometimes wrote:
What this trial has shown is the complete shambles Torfaen Council are when it comes to finances, &quot;standard practice" to pay invoices for work not yet complete! What sort of incompetence's do such things? No wonder doubt could be cast on people's honesty, when checks and balances are ignored, that is after all why invoices are reconciled with completed orders.

If Torfaen cannot do the basic accountancy tasks, then it should be removed from their remit like Education was, to ensure that the taxpayer is not being ripped off again.

As for the case taking 2 1/2 years to come to trial with the senior officer suspended on full £75K per year for that time, is ridiculous, not only for the financial waste, but the time these two have had to worry over their fate. Heads should roll both at Torfaen and the CPS.

O how true the above I totally agree with what you say
This has been the most bizarre case. Torfaen BC brought the charges and then the leader of the council Bob Wellington became the main defence witness, together with the Ex director of Education various senior management and the chief executive of Monmouthshire council. this should never have been brought to court in the first instance.
What happened at SRS 3 years ago was well.........!! Can you remember when they had nearly 1000 laptops in their stores for 18 months paid by our money, that were originally procured on behalf of Newport CC that seemed not to have signed up to any deal to pay for them!. Yes complete shambles

That's 8400 laptops, 75% of which were still on the shelf 12 months later. Add to that the wireless routers and peripherals and you have over £2M of your money that has not reached the people it was intended for. Some schools only received these laptops 12 months ago and were told to bin perfectly good IT kit before they received them as it was not compatible with the 'state of the art' SRS. The laptops, having sat on the shelf for 2 years have now failed and ICT classes, and the education of your children is suffering as a result.

Then there is the £5M that has been ploughed into the SRS. How many jobs has it created? None. How many locals have been employed? None. How many businesses have been attracted to the area as a result of the SRS? TCBC have no idea, but it was one of the promises so it should be known.

Council officers have been patting themselves on the back for finally returning a £78000 profit on the £5 million investment over the last 5 years. To put that in perspective, if you'd banked the £5M at 1% pa you'd have made £¼ million.

So, in short, it's difficult to see the benefits of the SRS, or TCBC for that matter, apart from making some council officers and councillors feel good about themselves."

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TORFAEN IT FRAUD TRIAL: Pair found not guilty

TWO men were found not guilty of false accounting at a Gwent council's IT hub today.

Farooq Dastgir, 53, of Coed Camlas, Pontypool and Gary Inchliffe, 52, of Beechcroft, Trelewis were accused of trying to pay for a newspaper supplement in the South Wales Argus using the council's money after the council decided it should be paid for through private sponsorship.